THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS; EMINENT RECRUITERS.
January 1645-6, I think, was the month in which Presbyterianism was in fullest tide. After that month, and through the spring and early summer of 1646, there was a visible ebb. The cause may have been partly that continued triumph everywhere of the New Model Army which had brought the War obviously to its fag-end, and now, perhaps, suggested to Parliament and the Londoners the uncomfortable idea that the marching mass of Independency, relieved from its military labours, would soon be re- approaching the capital, and at leisure to review the proceedings of its masters. There was, however, a more obvious cause. This was the increase of the Independent Vote in the House of Commons by the gradual coming in of the RECRUITERS.
By the outbreak of the Civil War in August 1642, and the consequent desertion of the House of Commons by two-thirds of its members, most of whom were then or afterwards formally disabled, the House, as we know, had been reduced to a mere stump of what it ought to have been constitutionally. There had been complaints about this outside, and regrets within the House itself; but it was felt that a time of Civil War could not be a time for Parliamentary elections. How could there be such elections while the King's forces were in possession of large regions of England, and these the very regions where most seats were vacant? For three years, therefore, the House had allowed the vacant seats in it to remain vacant, and had persisted in the public business in the state to which it had been reduced, i.e., with a nominal strength at the utmost of about 280, and a constant working attendance of only 100 or thereabouts. Not till after Naseby, and the recovery of more and more of English ground for Parliament by the successes of the New Model, was it deemed prudent to begin the issue of new writs; and even then the process was careful and gradual.
The first new writs issued were in Aug. 1645, and were for Southwark, St. Edmundsbury, and Hythe; in September there followed 95 additional new writs for boroughs or counties; in October there were 27 more; and so on by smaller batches in succeeding months, until, by the end of the year, 146 new members in all had been elected. This did not complete the process; for 89 new members more remained to be elected in the course of 1646, bringing the total number of the Recruiters up to about 235. Now, among these Recruiters, all of them Parliamentarians in the main sense, there were both Presbyterians and Independents. As Presbyterians, more or less, may be reckoned, among those elected before January 1645-6, Major- general RICHARD BROWNE (Wycombe), Major-general EDWARD MASSEY (Wootton Bassett), WALTER LONG, Esq. (Ludgershall, Wilts), and CLEMENT WALKER, Esq. (Wells): this last a very peculiar-tempered person from Somersetshire, a friend of Prynne's, and described by himself as an "elderly gentleman, of low stature, in a grey suit, with a little stick in his hand." Decidedly more numerous among the Recruiters, however, were men who might be called Independents, or were at least Tolerationists. Among such, all elected before January 1645-6, or not later than that month, may be named Colonel ROBERT BLAKE (Taunton), Sir JOHN DANVERS, brother of the late Earl of Danby (Malmesbury), the Hon. JOHN FIENNES, third son of Viscount Saye and Sele (Morpeth), GEORGE FLEETWOOD, Esq. (Bucks), Colonel CHARLES FLEETWOOD (Marlborough), Sir JAMES HARRINGTON (Rutland), the Hon. JAMES HERBERT, second son of the Earl of Pembroke (Wilts), Colonel JOHN HUTCHINSON (Notts), Commissary-general HENRY IRETON (Appleby), HENRY LAWRENCE, Esq., a gentleman of property and some taste for learning and speculation (Westmoreland), Sir MICHAEL LIVESEY (Queenborough), Colonel EDMUND LUDLOW (Wilts), SIMON MAYNE, Esq. (Aylesbury), young Colonel EDWARD MONTAGUE (Hants), Colonel RICHARD NORTON (Hants), Colonel CHARLES RICH (Sandwich), Colonel EDWARD ROSSITER (Great Grimsby), THOMAS SCOTT (Aylesbury), young Colonel ALGERNON SIDNEY (Cardiff), Colonel WILLIAM SYDENHAM (Melcombe Regis), and PETER TEMPLE, Esq. (Leicester). Of this list, nearly half, it may be noted, were or had been officers in the New Model. The fact was very significant. It was still more significant that among these New Model officers elected among the first Recruiters there was a knot of men who were already recognised as in a special sense Cromwellians. Almost all the New Model officers were devoted to Cromwell; but Ireton was his alter ego, and young Fleetwood, young Montague, young Sidney, and young Sydenham, belonged to a group known in the Army as Cromwell's passionate admirers and disciples. [Footnote: The statistics of the Recruiting in this paragraph are from my own counting of the New Writs from Aug. 1645 onwards in the Commons Journals, checked by Godwin's previous counting or calculation (Hist. of Commonwealth, II. 38, 39), and by the noting of new writs in the list of members of the Long Parliament given in the Parl. Hist. (II. 599-629). Among the individual Recruiters named I have tried not to include any whose election was later than Jan. 1645-6, and have trusted, in that particular, to the notices of new writs in the Commons Journals and the Parl. Hist.; but one cannot be perfectly sure that in each case an election immediately followed the new writ. My often-cited fly-sheet authority, Leach's Great Champions of England, has been of use. It distinguishes 131 Recruiters as of Parliamentary note before the end of July, 1646; but its list of Recruiters up to that date is neither complete nor accurate.—The description of Clement Walker is from his own Hist. of Independency (edit. 1660), Part I. p. 53.—The county in which there had to be most Recruiting, _i.e._in which there were most vacant seats, was Somersetshire. Nearly all the seats were vacant there. A large proportion of the seats was vacant in Notts, Yorkshire, Sussex, Westmoreland, and Wales.—The Recruiting went on not only through 1646, but also in stray cases through subsequent years; and FAIRFAX, SKIPPON, HARRISON, INGOLDSBY, among military men, and PRYNNE himself among civilians, came at length into the House.]
Not called Recruiters, but practically such for the Independents, were two original members who, after having been out of the House for a long while, were now restored to their places. These were Nathaniel Fiennes, alias "Young Subtlety," and the witty and freethinking Henry Marten. Fiennes, having been tried by court-martial and sentenced to death in December 1643, for his surrender of Bristol (antè, p. 6), had been forgiven and allowed to go abroad; but opinion of his conduct in that affair had meanwhile become more favourable, and before the end of 1645 he returned and resumed his seat. Marten (Vol. II. p. 166) had been expelled from the House by vote, Aug. 16, 1643, for words too daringly disrespectful of Royalty—in fact, for premature Republicanism; but, the House having become less fastidious in that matter, and his presence being greatly missed, the vote was rescinded January 6, 1645-6, and the record of it expunged from the Journals. [Footnote: Godwin's Commonwealth, II. 77, 78; Wood's Ath. III. 878 and 1238; and Commons Journals of dates given.]
Although as many as 146 Recruiters had been elected before the end of the year, they appear to have taken their places but slowly. Not till January 26, 1645-6, does one perceive any considerable effect on the numbers of the House. On that day there was a House of at least 183, the largest there had been for many a day—larger by 13 than the House that had made Fairfax commander-in-chief twelve months before. And thenceforward the numbers keep well up. On two occasions early in February there were Houses of 203 and 202 respectively; and before the summer of 1646 there were members enough at hand to form on great field-days Houses of from 250 to 270. By that time some of the military men among the Recruiters were able to be present. [Footnote: My notes of Divisions, from the Commons Journals.]